SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - General Motors Corp plans to have
1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California between 2012 to
2014 to comply with the state's goal to put thousands of
cleaner cars on its roads.

GM has about 60 Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicles in
Southern California now, the automaker's vice president for
research & development and planning, Larry Burns, said at the
National Hydrogen Association conference here.

"The next logical play for us is to take that up to a car
scale of about 1,000," Burns said in an interview.

ADVERTISEMENT

With 1,000 cars, GM will be "in the ballpark" of meeting
its share of the 7,500 zero-emissions cars California wants on
its roads between 2012 and 2014, Burns said.

He said GM would also have enough fuel cell cars on the
road to amass statistics on the technology's durability.

As the number of hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road
increases, Burns said there would be a "tipping point" toward
mainstream acceptance and financial viability for its fuel cell
vehicles in 2017 or 2018.

He said increasing the number of fuel cell cars on the road
would demonstrate that they are in demand and that there is a
sensible business model underlying their production. "That's
what I would call a tipping point," Burns said. "That could be
there in 2017 or 2018."

Fuel-cell powered vehicles, which run on hydrogen and emit
only water vapor, are being touted as a way to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, combat climate change and reduce the
United States' dependency on crude oil.

According to Burns, fuel cells are more applicable to big,
family cars than electric vehicle technology is because they
would not require an oversized battery for range and power.

At issue for fuel cells, however, is the lack of an
infrastructure for refueling. California, which has the
country's most ambitious plans for putting fuel cell cars on
the road, has only 25 refueling stations, Catherine Dunwoody,
executive director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership,
said at the conference.

Burns said GM is lobbying energy companies and lawmakers to
put 40 hydrogen refueling stations in the Los Angeles area.
Most residents would have to drive about three-and-a-half miles
or less to refuel, making fuel cell cars a more viable option
for them, he said.

Burns said such a project would cost about $160 million, a
fraction of the more than $1 billion GM has already spent on
developing fuel cell vehicles.

"$160 million is $10 per resident. That's two Starbucks
coffees," he said.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc's hydrogen unit, Shell Hydrogen, "has
plans to do what I think is a very responsible piece of this,"
Burns said, referring to the addition of hydrogen refueling
stations in the Los Angeles area.

Honda plans to start leasing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle,
the FCX Clarity, this summer to customers who live near three
refueling stations in the Los Angeles area. Ellis would not
specify how many of the cars would initially be available to
consumers, but he said the number would increase over time.

Ellis said he was seeing a higher level of interest from
energy companies and governments about investing in an
infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Burns agreed, saying $100-a-barrel oil and Al Gore's movie
about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," had had an
impact on many players in the industry.

"More and more people understand that something fundamental
is happening right now," he said.